That's because a new index is under development that can be used to categorize expected damage from ice storms, dangerous phenomena that occur when rain freezes on contact with the ground or other surfaces. (Read more about weather and natural disasters.)

Now being tested at 10 of the 122 National Weather Service (NWS) offices throughout the country, the Sperry-Piltz Ice Accumulation (SPIA) Index has potential to give utility companies and emergency-management teams—such as the Salvation Army and the Red Cross—more lead time to prepare for power outages and provide shelter to those in need.

Tulsa, Oklahoma; Springfield, Missouri; and Paducah, Kentucky were among the first offices to begin testing the index, and those cities have seen real impacts on preparedness for ice events, such as enabling power companies to order the necessary lumber to replace power poles even before a storm hits.

Seeing the SPIA Index's success, five more cities, including Nashville, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas, began to use the system this year.

Several years in the making, the index integrates already available forecasting data into an algorithm that estimates how much damage an ice storm will produce, especially focusing on damage to the cities' utility systems. It ranks the weather events from 0 (minimal damage) to 5 (catastrophic damage). This data also gives a sense of how long regions can expect their power be out. (Watch video: Weather 101.)

After working for 25 years in the electrical utility industry, Sperry first brought the idea for the index to his local NWS office in Tulsa in 2006.

Piltz immediately recognized the value of such an index: The system currently in place in most of the U.S. is to issue ice storm warnings when an accumulation of more than 0.25 inch (0.6 centimeter) is predicted.

But that oversimplifies the matter, Piltz said. "What Sid taught me is that wind is an equal player in the damage potential," he explained.

"You can have power losses with less than a quarter of an inch [of ice] if you've got gusty winds." (See extreme-weather pictures.)

The NWS Tulsa office began to use the SPIA Index in January 2007. The weekend after, the index successfully helped prepare Tulsa for a category 4 ice storm.